Gallup, a global performance-management consulting company, published this week its “2020 Global Law and Order” report in which it assesses people’s perception of personal security and their private experiences with crime and law enforcement. More specifically, the index results measure people’s responses to four questions and are based on more than 175,000 interviews with individuals in 144 nations in the year 2019. The report mentioned that according to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, “conflict, insecurity, weak institutions and limited access to justice” are still considered as threats to sustainable factors. The global law and order report noted that said threats were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which further threatened the slow progress in the world in achieving “peaceful and inclusive” societies. The report stated that despite collecting data for 2019 before the pandemic began, the results will act as a starting point for how the world will respond to the challenges caused by the pandemic, including those associated with law enforcement. The report highlighted that the four security metrics that Gallup inquired about have barely changed over the years and in this vein, commented that there is more room to grow ahead of the COVID-19 challenges. The report concluded that the majority of the world population has confidence in the police and accordingly feel safe. In details and according to the survey, 69% of the world population trusts local police forces, and 69% feels secure walking alone at night times. In the same context, only 12% of the interviewed individuals reported having possessions stolen from them last year and 6% claimed having been attacked or robbed. The global scores stretched from a high of 97 in Singapore to a low of 43 in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the world index average score stood at 82 in 2019 with 90 nations scoring below this average. Singapore came in first on the list with a Law & Order index score of 97, followed by Turkmenistan (97), China (94), Iceland (93) and Kuwait (93), only to name a few.

On the regional front, Kuwait ranked 5^th globally and first in the MENA region with a score of 93, followed by the United Arab Emirates (9^th globally with a score of 92), Egypt (18^th globally with a score of 89), Saudi Arabia (20^th globally with a score of 89) and Jordan (34^th globally with a score of 85) among others.  On a local basis, Lebanon ranked 75^th in the world and 8^th in the MENA region in the law and order index with a score of 78, unchanged from the previous year, outperforming Algeria (global rank: 85, score: 75), Palestinian Territories (global rank: 87, score: 75) and Tunisia (global rank: 94, score: 72), only to name a few.